Adam

Thank you, Jay, good argument.
Or it would be good, given too literalistic an intent. I did not intend for anyone to think that I was presenting an eyewitness recording exactly what John the Baptist said on his very first public speech. In context of the Qumran community at the Dead Sea, there were probably thousands already receptive to such views before John first spoke. (Similarly today some sects within Islam would be receptive to attacks upon the prevailing Moslem community.) When he did launch his career, he probably was "preaching to the choir", so to speak. When he did start trying to convert people, he probably had hours of preliminaries before he got around to such biting rebukes. People who stayed around long enough to get to that point were probably already captivated. (I remember a series of Bible lectures I went to--it started out at a public place, shifted soon to a Seventh Day Adventist Church, and only after many weeks went into full attack mode--but by then some people were sold on it enthusiasticlly.)

I don't suppose there ever was a point in time when John came to a new place and started off with the quote you ridicule.

Any preacher would assume that people needed forgiveness, not that they were immune because of birth.

Q2 is a literary strand. That it's whole content is unitary is the evidence that an eyewitness added in what he personally knew from being a disciple of John the Baptist. A second or third generation Christian would minimize John, not glorify him.

Sheshbazzar

Imaginative, and -'probably'.... 'probably'.... 'probably'.... 'probably'...___never happened.

More straw held together with nothing more than :horsecrap:

Adam

okestick:
I was looking for a good image of a stick poking into a beehive, and this was the nearest I could come up with. I realize that you're all trying to ignore me so I'll go away, because you know it didn't work to swarm out on me with your failed attempts to disprove me (with your authoritarian appeal to conventional academic scholarship that has not at all addressed the issues I raise).

Next I looked for a Winnie-the-Pooh image of the bear sleeping after eating his honey, in order to represent the current strategy here to hide and go dormant or hibernate, hoping that I'll be gone when you guys awake from your slumbers.

Sheshbazzar

Oh Adam. You already know there is no way of disproving your imaginary made up horse-shit.

Everyone must be wrong but you. You are -so- pathetic.

You should have known this is a site not at all disposed to favor such theories.

Why not go back and see if you can find a nice Christian audience to 'buy' your material?